Nigerians Bypass CBN Crypto Ban to Trade N78 Billion Bitcoin in 3 Months

• Nigerians traded at least N77.75B ($185M) worth of Bitcoin (BTC) in the first third of the year despite the CBN crypto ban.

• This is according to data made available by Paxful, one of the major peer-to-peer (P2P) cryptocurrency platforms in Nigeria.

• According to a 2021 report by Chainalysis, Nigeria ranks 6th in the world in terms of crypto adoption.

Nigerians traded an average of N77.75B ($185M) worth of Bitcoin in the first third of the year regardless of the CBN crypto ban.

According to data released by Paxful, one of the major P2P cryptocurrency platforms in Nigeria, the N77.75B is a 5.71% increase from the N73.54B worth of Bitcoin that was traded within the same period in 2021.

Of all the total N300.48B ($715M) worth of Bitcoin traded on the platform in the quarter under review, Nigeria accounted for 25.87%.

Global trade on the platform showed an 8.33% increase from the N277.377B ($660M) that was traded on it in the corresponding period of 2021.

According to the firm, Nigeria with 16,000 daily trades is the largest trading country in 2021. Within this period, the market cap of BTC experienced a dip of $36.90B. It fell from $902.10B on January 1, 20222 to $865.20B on March 31, 2022.

This was regardless of restrictions on cryptocurrency transactions in Nigeria by the CBN in February 2021. 

The order by the CBN to stop cryptocurrency transactions was stated:

“Further to earlier regulatory directives on the subject, the bank hereby wishes to remind regulated institutions that dealing in cryptocurrencies or facilitating payments for cryptocurrency exchanges is prohibited.”

The restriction has seen Nigerians adopt the P2P trading of cryptocurrencies, especially BTC.

According to a report by Chinalysis in 2021, Nigeria was ranked 6th in the world in terms of crypto adoption. 

Another recent report by KuCoin, a crypto exchange with more than 10 million registered users revealed that an estimated 33.4 million Nigerians trade or own crypto assets.

Read also: PayPal Introduces Crypto Transfer and Withdrawal

Founder and Coordinator, Blockchain Nigeria User Group, Chimezie Chuta, stated that the P2P nature of BTC is the cause of its increasing adoption in Nigeria.

He said, “Crypto is designed to be P2P and the only way we started talking about bank accounts is for easy offloads or what we call unwrap.”

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